I think they want it automated so it would need to be integrated to Sonar/Radarr etc rather than the machine you watch the media on.

This. I looked at a bunch of options and these are the best for OpenWrt and are very reasonably priced. Mine did torrenting, VPN, and a few other small services before I got my proper served up and running and now it is less loaded and more relaxed without that workload. Absolutely awesome, very high quality for low price, and it comes with a very slightly modified OpenWrt firmware which is unlocked by default.

That is essentially what gluetun does. It is a little simpler to set up given that it is all preinstalled and you just select your provider and details and it is done. And again, you just specify the network for other containers to use the gluetun service and it is done. Very simple, easy for using many services through one VPN connection, and available on things like CasaOS with simple setup.

What do you do with a faulty RAID drive? Early in the morning!

I don’t know about videos but having a look at the OSI model is a good way to start. It covers the abstract framework for packetizing data including things like the distinction between hardware and software, envelope, encryption, application layer stuff, the whole shebang. The cool thing is by going hardware, network, application you can see where responsibility are and it helps you understand where things can go wrong.

If you are interested there are plenty of CCNA style courses available on the internet, licit and otherwise, and they go into more depth, and the same applies to RHCE/RHCSA material. The training for certifications like that covers what you want to know but also puts it in context, and again licit and otherwise sources are available.

It looks like it is downsampling the video or streaming after converting to another codec. Some codecs are fine for decoding on the server but the app may not support them so the server converts them. Some files are of higher quality than what the server is configured to deliver so it downsamples to stream it.

Check the configuration and look for anything to do with codecs, hardware decoding, streaming quality, and so on. It may also be on the app, so if you can access a different interface then test that to narrow down the issue.

Something I have found is missing from both of these suggestions as well as every podcast app on device is transcoding to speed up so it is not sped up on the fly. For a lot of phones and other devices the task of playing back at 2x speed is enough to demand a higher power state than what is required to play a sped up file. For efficiency doing a single pass of speeding up the audio then playing back at that speed would use less power during the playback phase, allowing you to download and speed up all of your podcasts at home while on charge then listen for long periods without completely killing the battery. I have checked with a few if the open source devs and this is not a feature they see utility for so nobody intends to make it.